Granting Full Disk Access — FocusDragon Docs

Why this one matters more than people think

FocusDragon's domain-level blocking works by editing /etc/hosts so that twitter.com (and friends) resolve to a local block page. That's a system file, owned by root, and macOS gates write access to it behind Full Disk Access. If FDA isn't granted, the daemon silently can't write the file — your blocks will still appear active in the UI, but the moment you open Orion or any browser without our extension, every blocked domain will load normally.

This is the #1 setup miss. If you skip Full Disk Access, blocking works in Safari, Chrome, and Firefox (the browser extensions still run) but fails the moment you open any browser without our extension (no extension, broken DNS layer).

Step-by-step

Open System Settings.
Privacy & Security → Full Disk Access.
Click the + button. In the file picker, navigate to /Applications and add FocusDragon.app. Toggle it on.
The background daemon executable ships inside the app bundle (Contents/MacOS/FocusDragonDaemon), so a single FDA entry on FocusDragon.app covers both the UI and the daemon — no separate /Library entry to add.
Quit FocusDragon completely (Cmd+Q, not just closing the window) and relaunch.

Verifying it actually works

The cleanest test: create a one-item block targeting example.com (with No Lock so you can toggle it freely), start it, then open example.com in any browser — Safari, Chrome, Firefox, whatever. You should see the FocusDragon block page, not the IANA example domain.

If example.com loads normally in a browser where you haven't installed our extension (Orion or a fresh browser profile is the cleanest test bed), FDA on FocusDragon is missing or stale. Re-check the FocusDragon entry in the Full Disk Access pane, remove and re-add it if the toggle won't stick, and reboot if all else fails — macOS occasionally caches stale entitlement state until next login.

What FDA does NOT grant

Full Disk Access sounds scary but it's narrowly scoped: it lets FocusDragon read and write protected system files. It doesn't grant network access, doesn't grant Accessibility (that's separate), and doesn't let us see your screen (that's Screen Recording). FocusDragon's only use of FDA is the /etc/hosts edit.

If you ever uninstall FocusDragon, the daemon's uninstall path reverses the /etc/hosts edits and de-registers itself — you don't need to touch the Full Disk Access pane manually. The stale entry can be removed for cleanliness but doesn't do anything once the binary is gone.